I thought this had to do with workers and that it had been fixed in the latest patch. But I see the same slowness between middle to late-game turns. Is this worker related? Are there plans to address it in a future patch?

kaltorak

Nov 04, 2010, 10:27 AM

I have noticed an improvement in game performance and turn speed since the patch. I have also read that more players noticed the same. No idea if they changed anything about the workers.

SuperJay

Nov 04, 2010, 10:47 AM

I think that prior to the release of the most recent patch, 2KGreg said that that patch did not include fixes that would dramatically reduce turn time for everyone, but that some players would find slight improvements. I don't think the patch contained fixes to how the game processes workers, though. Could be wrong but I don't recall it being mentioned in the patch notes.

Maktaka

Nov 04, 2010, 12:03 PM

The cause for the slow turns was identified prior to the last patch going up, but a fix was not found and implemented for the patch. There is always a point where you have to stop putting new things in the patch so you can actually ship it, and unfortunately the cause of the slow turns was found too late in the patch cycle to make it in.

TheMeInTeam

Nov 04, 2010, 12:34 PM

The cause for the slow turns was identified prior to the last patch going up, but a fix was not found and implemented for the patch. There is always a point where you have to stop putting new things in the patch so you can actually ship it, and unfortunately the cause of the slow turns was found too late in the patch cycle to make it in.

This is a problem that should have been corrected, what, 8+ years ago? Why is it still a problem now :sad:? Given that it was huge problem in the previous game, why is it still a glaring problem on release? Priority failure, that's why.

Maktaka

Nov 04, 2010, 03:21 PM

Why is it still a problem now?I'm curious as to how a problem in Civ 5 would have been fixed 8 years ago, seeing as Civ 4 wasn't even released back then. You also seem to be making the assumption that the end problem now is caused by the same issue as it was in previous Civ incarnations. There is no evidence to indicate that it is, and the fact that there were far more workers on equally sized maps in Civ 4 without a matching increase in turn times indicates that it wasn't, and as such your impotent nerd rage is pointless (thus the aforementioned impotency of it).

The problem stems from workers evaluating what to build. When a worker is selected, either by the player or by the AI, whether you have improvement recommendations enabled or not, it will evaluate possible improvements to be made to all tiles within the cultural borders. This causes two problems: first that selecting a worker on a large map with a large empire can lead to significant delays (upwards of 30 s), and second that processing the AI turns can take an inordinate amount of time as each worker individually processes the potential improvements to be made to the entire empire (and unfortunately the AI likes to build lots of workers).

The fix is almost certainly going to be just caching the information (warning: amateur armchair game design theorycrafting ahead): calculate it once at the beginning of the civilization's turn (AI or player turn), update tiles when they are obstructed by a moving unit or another worker calls dibs on building an improvement there, and update if new tiles are added by founding a city or culture bombing. For the player side, this will move the calculation from selecting a worker to the time it takes to start a new turn, but it'll only be done once instead of each time a worker is selected and the increased workload from the player's calculations should be easily offset by the reduced workload for the AI's calculations.

Of course, getting multithreaded AI to calculate this exact sort of information in the background while the player farts around deciding things during their turn would be the best option.

Matster79

Nov 08, 2010, 03:27 PM

I just don't understand the whole story above. I pay 50 Euros for a game to have fun. Not to wonder how the "developpers" may solve the problem. When the gameplay is so slow it shouldn't be allowed to sell a product like this.

lschnarch

Nov 09, 2010, 01:47 AM

The problem stems from workers evaluating what to build.

That's exactly the problem. Picking each individual unit and then checking about what it could do.

The way to go is just the opposite: what has to be done?
And after that find the combination of units which can fulfill the task in the shortest way.

smellymummy

Nov 09, 2010, 01:54 AM

the issue is settlers. turn on the map, look at the AI, check your logs find the settler pumps. settlers eat up the most resources

they first ask for a combat unit to escort to X,Y
then X,Y gets changed because the settler is stuck in a loop trying to dodge AI settlers or finding a path
then by the time the combat unit arrives, it's descheduled because the settler asked another combat unit to escort it!

goes on and on. and its 100% worse when looking at settlers on islands